It has been twenty years since the Arditti Quartet last visited
the Wigmore Hall and, if nothing else, their two concerts on the
9th and 16th of April were an attempt to make up for lost time.
Between them, the two evenings were fit to bursting with modern
and contemporary string quartet music, with only two tonal –
or mostly tonal – pieces wedged in for the sake of those
less comfortable with microtones, clusters and extended bowing
techniques.

Ironically, it was those relatively familiar pieces – both
in the first programme – which caused the Ardittis most
difficulty. Despite the vehemence of the Grosse Fuge
which opened the first concert, there was little to recommend
their Beethoven: highly suspect intonation and some noticeable
flaws of ensemble produced a performance that wasn’t so
much visceral as rough as guts. Janácek’s Second
Quartet suffered similar problems, coming across as at least
50% more modern than it really is and severely wanting for any
sort of Czech character. If the objective was to demonstrate these
pieces’ inherent modernity, the approach backfired: they
simply sounded under-rehearsed.

But there are hundreds of professional quartets out there tackling
such basic repertory; the number who can play the astonishingly
complex and endlessly inventive scores of Kurtág, Rihm,
Ligeti or Xenakis is, on the other hand, severely limited. Unquestionably
at the forefront of this niche, the Ardittis – led by founder
and first violinist Irvine Arditti – are tireless champions
of new-music, having commissioned hundreds of pieces by countless
composers and premiered many more.

Indeed it was an Arditti-commissioned work that was the highlight
of the first evening. Conlon Nancarrow’s String Quartet
No. 3 was written when the composer was 75 and only just
beginning to receive the international attention his highly individual
music deserved. Each of the quartet’s three movements is
built around a four-part canon in which each successive voice
is in a faster tempo than the last. This means that in the third
movement, for instance, the cello’s unhurried and slightly
cumbersome melody becomes a sprightly dance by the time it reaches
the first violin part. The complex, interlocking-tempi were convincingly
handled by the players and the spectral shimmer of harmonics in
the second movement was especially lovely, despite an untimely
coughing fit from a member of the audience.

But the meat of the first programme consisted of two somewhat
more substantial works, both of them central to the Ardittis’
repertoire. Their take on Ligeti’s Second String Quartet
is considered nigh-on-definitive by the composer himself, and
their performance on the 9th certainly had an air of authority
about it, making perfect sense of its somewhat bipolar design.
If the quiet, almost still passages that punctuate the work didn’t
quite have the luminosity they can do, the noisier moments –
such as the fourth movement’s Presto furioso –
came across vividly, and their handling of the work’s wide
variety of otherworldly textures was always entrancing. In Dutilleux’s
‘Ainsi la nuit’, however, the finely interwoven
episodes – seven movements and four ‘parentheses’
– felt a little aimless, revolving obsessively around a
handful of indistinct motifs. There was some beautiful playing
here, especially from cellist Rohan de Saram, but the music seemed
positively straight-laced next to the unflagging inventiveness
of Ligeti.

The following Saturday saw an even more ambitious programme, featuring
the work of no fewer than seven composers. If there was a common
thread running through the evening, it was in the extreme concentration
of the individual pieces on offer, each one focusing on one or
two ideas before moving on. Webern’s Six Bagatelles
best represented this impulse, each of the tiny movements an exquisite
gem of utmost clarity, every gesture invested with meaning. The
Ardittis’ performance was highly detailed, with a rapt stillness
to the slower movements that belied Webern’s reputation
as a heartless creator of musical machines.

Similar in approach – but quite different in character –
were the Twelve Microludes by Kurtág. The twelve
pieces were just as fleeting, but noticeably warmer on account
of the folk music flavour underlying them. Even more aphoristic
was Ferneyhough’s Adagissimo, which essentially
consisted of two layers, the first of which – played on
the two violins – was fast and highly discursive, while
the other, a melody shared between viola and cello, was lugubriously
slow. When the melody ended, so did the piece – making for
a welcome contrast to James Dillon’s String Quartet
No. 3, which didn’t know when to stop. Despite some
intriguing moments, such as the skirling clusters at the end of
the first movement, there was a paucity of truly arresting material
in Dillon’s piece, and it didn’t take long for the
abrasive, hard-edged quality of the writing to become grating.
Indeed, despite being one of the longest pieces on the programme,
it was the least satisfying, coming across with an uninviting
self-seriousness matched only by the composer’s programme
notes.

More successful was Bent Sørensen’s Angels’
Music, whose whistling glissandi swooped up and down in attractively
gossamer textures. Melodies appeared and disappeared again, while
the harmonies occasionally hinted at a concealed tonality, emerging
now and then like sunlight cutting through a cloudbank. Again
though, it all went on a bit too long, its material not really
enough to carry a fifteen minute piece. Far more involving was
the only established ‘classic’ on the programme, Xenakis’
Tetras. Here, a quarter of an hour seemed scarcely enough
to contain the endless stream of squalling sirens and bizarre
noises conjured up by this highly idiosyncratic composer. The
Ardittis played their hearts out, unleashing a furious onslaught
of sound at the work’s climax and investing the episodic
structure with an unflinching sense of purpose.

But the real discovery of the second evening
was the opener, Wolfgang Rihm’s 12th String Quartet,
which – having been composed in 2001 – was also the
youngest work on the programme. A piece that relied less on gimmickry
and more on thematic development, its three sections (fast/slow/fast)
merged seamlessly into a terrifically exciting musical argument.
Though obviously modern, it was music that forged a clear link
with the great quartets of the past, effortlessly taking up the
mantle of Bartók and Shostakovich. The Ardittis, persuasive
as ever, made it sound like a modern classic.